From student to son: Lubbock teacher adopts boy who was classroom 'holy terror'

NATALIE GROSS

Saturday

Jul 12, 2014 at 12:40 PM

When Linda Hooper met her son, Cruz, in the fall of 1981, she loathed him.

A veteran elementary teacher, Hooper's conscience told her it was wrong to hate a child, especially a student. But Cruz Riojas' tendency toward frequent, violent outbursts made it difficult for Hooper to think of him as anything other than a "holy terror."

In the 33 years following that school year at Brown Elementary School, however, Riojas would not only change Hooper's opinion of him forever - he would also change his last name.

Infamous classroom legend

"There evidently is a very thin line between love and hate," Hooper said during an hourlong interview at her home last week. Cruz, who lives in San Antonio, was in West Texas visiting family for the Fourth of July weekend.

It's a long, emotional story of how teacher and pupil became mother and son, and one they chose to tell for the first time in almost 35 years.

"What had happened was for like about five years before I got him, I was warned, 'You don't want that child,' because he was really a holy terror," Hooper, 68, said. "He had a reputation, and he intended to live up to it."

Sometimes Cruz misbehaved, using his still-prevalent sense of dry humor to distract the class from the teacher's lesson. Other times, he threw chairs or stabbed his peers. His academic standing made for an extra challenge. He had dyslexia and was two grade levels behind in reading, so he was considered a special education student.

By the time Cruz reached sixth grade, he had become a Brown Elementary legend. His notorious antics led Hooper to tell her principal, "If you put that Riojas kid in my class, I'm going to quit."

Though she never made good on that promise, Hooper said she wasn't joking.

"I really had hoped that he'd be put in another person's room, but at that time I was the only one who could really handle the hard discipline problems," she said.

'Total squalor'

Cruz, now 45, said when he was growing up he did anything to get attention. The violence stemmed from a constant need to defend himself at home.

During his sixth-grade year with the woman he once called Mrs. Hooper, Cruz's biological mother was on husband No. 5 - an abusive, tyrannical man Cruz doesn't like to talk about.

Cruz, his four half-siblings, their mother and "No. 5" lived in a one-room lean-to on a turnrow in the middle of a field.

He wore the same green pants and striped shirt to school every day, Hooper remembers, and the only shoes he had to wear were his sister's. He and his siblings were sent home with lice 12 times that year.

"It was total squalor," Hooper said. "I would not let my animals live the way they had to live."

Cruz described it this way: "We slept on the floor and ate ----."

That's all one needs to know to understand the situation, he said.

Change of heart

In December of that school year, Cruz changed, Hooper said. He starting asking if he could help around the classroom, and it wasn't long before Hooper and her husband, Gale, hired him to do odd jobs at their home and rental properties for cash - money his stepfather didn't let him keep.

As a healthier relationship developed between Cruz and his teacher, the Hoopers' home became a refuge for the troubled student. Whenever he and No. 5 fought, Cruz ran 7.5 miles from his house to theirs.

His home life worsened as he entered seventh grade at Atkins Junior High School.

One cold, snowy day in February 1983, Cruz had the last fight he would have with his stepfather - one in which he told the man in no uncertain terms he would beat him up when he got older.

No. 5 kicked him out. He was 12.

Cruz's mom packed everything he owned in a cardboard box, called Hooper and took her son to hide at a nearby truck stop. When Hooper arrived, she found the two behind an 18-wheeler, and Cruz's mom asked if Hooper could keep him for the weekend - just until things at home calmed down.

"He never left," Hooper said. "I had him from then on."

From student to son

Neither Cruz nor Hooper thought his stay would be long term, but neither complained as the days, months and years went by.

"If it was an hour, it was an hour I didn't have to spend there," Cruz said. "You think, 'Hey, lunch? Lunch is great.' Lunch worked its way into dinner, and here we are 35 years later."

Hooper said her husband, a retired firefighter, never questioned her decision to let Cruz stay, which she admires him for to this day. Gale and Cruz formed a bond of mutual respect Cruz had never experienced with the other father figures in his life.

As Cruz settled into his new life, the Hoopers bought him a new wardrobe and helped him get his first job, an Avalanche-Journal paper route, so he could make his own money and buy things he'd never had.

Cruz also started performing better in school - credit that goes to retired special education teacher James Harris, Hooper said, who became another positive influence in Cruz's life. Under Harris' instruction, Cruz tested out of special education by his high school graduation.

Everything was going well for the family until Cruz hurt his knee at school. Emergency room doctors would not give him stitches without a parent or legal guardian present.

"That was the first catalyst of my going to his mother and asking for permission, No. 1, to be able to give him stitches," Hooper said. They also wanted to take Cruz on vacation to Fun Valley, Colorado, but would again need her signature.

They got it, and Hooper carried that paper everywhere, eventually laminating it to keep it from fraying.

"I lived in fear every single day that they would just come jerk the whole thing away from me," Hooper said. "Until he was about 16, I lived in absolute total fear that there would be a knock on the door saying, 'He is not yours. We want him back. There's nothing you can do about it.' And I would've had to give him up. I had no rights at that time."

Hooper said by the time Cruz was 16, she thought if someone did try to take him away, she could take the matter to court and keep it there until he turned 18.

"He was obviously mine by then," she said. "After you show somebody what they can have, when they've got their own bedroom, when they've got their own clothes, when they've got a reason to get up in the morning and they change their whole attitude - he was no longer chip-on-his-shoulder anymore and happy all the time - then going back would be worse. It would be worse than if I had never shown him any of it."

Hooper's choice to claim him as her own didn't come without opposition. Her mother and friends - who now love Cruz, Hooper said - thought she had lost her mind.

"It was a different era," Cruz said. "Back in the early '80s, white people didn't adopt Mexican kids. It just didn't happen."

There was no formal adoption, however. At least not for a while.

"He had asked many, many times to change his name to ours," Hooper said. "We were afraid that he was young, that he might not understand what he was getting into, that you cannot change your ethnicity by changing your name, and all these things. We never said no, but we just never did it."

Hooper said she was on a school trip in Dallas when she got a phone call - her "biggest joy" - shortly before Cruz's 30th birthday. He wanted to be adopted.

Becoming Cruz Hooper

Cruz said he had thought about legally changing his name since he was 18, but for one reason or another, it never happened. When he got married, he and his wife went by the surname Riojas.

At age 29, however, Cruz decided to go through with it, and his attorney-aunt told him the easiest way would be to have the Hoopers adopt him.

Cruz said at first he thought he was a little old for that, but decided it was the best option.

"I just thought it would honor my parents," he said, holding back tears.

In a formal adoption ceremony Jan. 5, 1998, Cruz and his wife, Anel, legally became part of the family - last name and all.

"This was such a joy because we had four girls so there was not going to be a boy that would carry our name," Hooper said. "When he asked us it was such a joy to us. Gale was so thrilled. Because see, now we have a son, and he will carry our name, and our grandchildren's names are Hooper. It was such a blessing to me even to be asked."

But Hooper didn't need legal papers to prove what she had known in her heart for so long.

"He was my son from the day I kept him," she said. "In December of that year ... he was such a brat, I had already started loving him."

Cruz does well in his job for payroll company Corporate Solutions in San Antonio, and the Hoopers joke he could buy and sell them any day. He generally keeps quiet about his past - Hooper recalled a time recently when someone told him, "You wouldn't understand. You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth," and Cruz said nothing - choosing rather to focus on the present.

Gale, a man of few words, didn't say much as he listened to his wife and son tell their story, but did interject one time to add, "He's made me very proud."

Cruz changed their lives, Hooper said, and in doing so, he changed the way she taught for 18 years after he left her classroom. She looked at students differently, thinking of them all as her Cruzes.

As the interview neared the end, Hooper wanted to make sure she said one more thing about her son, the boy who once caused her so much grief - the man who's now her pride and joy.

With tears filling her eyes, Hooper paused.

"I think he's really the one thing in my life I've done right."

natalie.gross@lubbockonline.com

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